We now turn our attention to a rather different perspective on ‘being human’ in a digital age: the notion that ‘the human’ is a social category which is made, not a biological or philosophical matter-of-fact. Where the films and readings in week 3 emphasised the necessity of maintaining a focus on what is valuable in human ways of being, the examples we will look at this week instead explore how ‘the human’ is a flexible category, one we can change and re- make in the interests of, for example, a fairer society, a better life, a richer culture, or perhaps merely personal gain. We are looking here at perspectives which focus on how technology works to re-define what constitutes ‘the human’ - for better or worse - and what that might mean for education.
To summarise, where week 3 was concerned with approaches defined by humanism, week 4 will be focused on aspects of the posthuman.
In addition to the content: This week you will start creating your digital artefact. This is the final assignment for the course, and you will submit it for peer assessment during week 5. Read more about the Digital Artefact here.
This surprisingly moving short film takes on a core theme of popular cyberculture - the possibility of machinic sentience and the questions advanced artificial intelligence raise about what it means to be human. Here, the boundary between human and machine is questioned - if Robbie is capable of experiencing loneliness, happiness, faith and friendship, in what senses is he not human? If the humanistic principles of autonomy, rationality, self-awareness, responsibility, resilience and so on can be held by an artificial intelligence within a mechanical form, what does that say about the extent to which they rely on human cognition and the flesh of a human body to give ‘human’ meaning to the experience of the world?
A vacuum-cleaning robot actress who doesn’t do hallucinogenics or nudity? Gumdrop will cheer you up after Robbie. She raises many of the same questions, but this time there are differences - literally - of voice and of embeddedness in the human world. For once, the vision of a posthuman future is not dystopic...
‘No-one wants to be entirely organic. No-one wants to get sick, or old, or die. My only choice was to enhance.’ In the future-world of True Skin, synthetic enhancement is normal, and the boundary between human and machinic body has been erased. Where Robbie and Gumdrop look at the human in the robot, True Skin considers the robotic in the human. In particular, you might want to think about the final scene of the movie in which another core sci-fi fantasy - memory backup - is drawn on. What does this notion say about the nature of mind, memory and learning, and the ways in which technological mediation is positioned in relation to it? Warning: this film has some mild sexual content around the 2 minute mark.
Interviews with players of the online game World of Warcraft are placed over a seamless merging of virtual and real life. This is another play on the messiness of our division of the human and non-human, this time within the context of avatar creation and role play. What does the final section of this film in particular reveal about the relationship between player and avatar, between the human and the simulation? What versions of the human are opened up here, and which are closed down?
Transhumanism is very different from the more critical modes of posthumanism that were touched on last week, in the Badmington article in particular. Where critical posthumanists see posthumanism primarily as a philosophical stance which, among other things, draws attention to the inequalities and injustices often wrought in the name of ‘the human’, transhumanists in general see ‘human values’ as a good, though incomplete, project. For transhumanists, ‘humanity’ is a temporary, flawed condition: the future of human evolution is in the direction of a post-human future state in which technological progress has freed us from the inconveniences of limited lifespan, sickness, misery and intellectual limitation. Transhumanism, in summary, is to a large extent based on the extension of the humanistic principles of rationality, scientific progress and individual freedom that critical posthumanists would question.
This article by Nick Bostrom (Oxford University) - whose work is at the more academically respectable end of what can be a fairly uneven field - does a good job of summarising the transhumanist position, though it’s important when reading this to understand that he does not use the term ‘posthuman’ in the sense that, for example, Badmington does. What is your own response to the ‘values’ he proposes? Do you find them attractive or repellent? On what basis? Bostrom mentions education a few times here: what might his vision of transhumanism mean for the future of education? What would a transhumanist theory of education look like?
N Katherine Hayles (Duke University), author of the influential 1999 text How we became posthuman, here constructs a challenge to transhumanism which presents a useful contrast to the Bostrom text; even if you don’t want to delve too much into the advanced reading this week, we’d recommend you read the opening part, simply for the critique Hayles provides of the transhumanist position.
Hayles argues that the framework within which transhumanism considers the future of human evolution and technological advance is ‘too narrow and ideologically fraught with individualism and neoliberal philosophy to be fully up to the task’. Via a critical reading of some classic works of science fiction, she argues that we need a more nuanced, and more politically defensible, series of perspectives than those offered by the theorists and proponents of transhumanist philosophy. The first part of the essay explores some of the problems with the individualistic focus of transhumanism, while the second half uses the literary perspective to more fully explore the issues at stake.
In a sense her argument here is also an argument for the way this course has been set up: by placing the artefacts of popular culture alongside contemporary philosophy and theory, we can gain a richer view of the implications of technological shift for our world and our work. Do you agree? Do you find Hayles’ refutation of transhumanism convincing? And why, given that she clearly has very sound critical reasons for her dislike of transhumanism, does she continue to liken her relationship with it to a ‘relationship with an obsessive and very neurotic lover’?
Perspectives on education
System upgrade: realising the vision for UK education (2012) EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme. http://tel.ioe.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/TELtaster.pdf
(The link is to a taster document for the full report, which you will find here).
This report may seem a long way from the sci-fi fantasies and far-fetched human futures envisioned in our other readings and films this week. However, it is presented here as a chance to look at how the themes of enhancement, transformation and technological advance - so important to the literatures and imaginaries of transhumanism - occur and recur, generally unquestioned, across the more everyday literatures of online education. ‘Technology-enhanced learning’ appears to have become the new acceptable term globally for what used to be called ‘e-learning’, but if we look at this term through the lens of transhumanist thought, what new perspectives on online education does it reveal?
This reading is a summary of the report from a large, recent UK research programme (2007-12) which was explicitly concerned with the technological enhancement of learning. There is much in the report which is unexceptionable. However, in reading it, you should consider what vision for education and technology is being forged here. In particular, what has the language used in the report inherited - consciously or otherwise - from the popular and philosophical discourses of transhumanism? How are terms like ‘transformation’, ‘enhancement’ and ‘empowerment’ used? What relationship between the human and the technological is being described? Is the vision here a useful one for us to work with as educators and as learners? What alternative visions might we pursue? Which ‘system’ is being ‘upgraded’?
Carr, M. (2008) Is Google making us stupid? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
This final reading pulls together many of the themes we’ve touched on over the period of the course. It’s an interesting one to read alongside the ‘TEL’ report above, thinking about how relations between the human and the technological are differently worked in each. If the TEL report creates a vision in which technology is under individual or societal control (technology in the TEL report is ‘harnessed’, ‘utilised’, ‘developed’, ‘employed’ in the interests of enhancement), in the Carr article it is human faculties which are under the control of the technology. For Carr, our media environments develop their own logic, to which we adapt socially and physiologically. In a return to a now familiar theme, ‘human nature’ and ‘human being’ is ‘made’ in response to technological shift. Yet this ‘making’ of the human is far from the vision of empowerment and enhancement that we have seen in the readings on transhumanism, and in the vision of education and technology that we saw presented in the TEL report.
‘As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence’, concludes Carr. Is it possible to counter the technological determinism of this view, without resorting to over-simplistic assertions of human dominance over technology? How should we respond, as teachers and learners, to the idea that the internet damages our capacity to think?
To summarise, where week 3 was concerned with approaches defined by humanism, week 4 will be focused on aspects of the posthuman.
In addition to the content:
This week you will start creating your digital artefact. This is the final assignment for the course, and you will submit it for peer assessment during week 5. Read more about the Digital Artefact here.
Popular cultures
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**Watch on YouTube**
Ideas and interpretations
CoreBostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values’ reproduced from Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 4, May (2005)http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html
Transhumanism is very different from the more critical modes of posthumanism that were touched on last week, in the Badmington article in particular. Where critical posthumanists see posthumanism primarily as a philosophical stance which, among other things, draws attention to the inequalities and injustices often wrought in the name of ‘the human’, transhumanists in general see ‘human values’ as a good, though incomplete, project. For transhumanists, ‘humanity’ is a temporary, flawed condition: the future of human evolution is in the direction of a post-human future state in which technological progress has freed us from the inconveniences of limited lifespan, sickness, misery and intellectual limitation. Transhumanism, in summary, is to a large extent based on the extension of the humanistic principles of rationality, scientific progress and individual freedom that critical posthumanists would question.
This article by Nick Bostrom (Oxford University) - whose work is at the more academically respectable end of what can be a fairly uneven field - does a good job of summarising the transhumanist position, though it’s important when reading this to understand that he does not use the term ‘posthuman’ in the sense that, for example, Badmington does. What is your own response to the ‘values’ he proposes? Do you find them attractive or repellent? On what basis? Bostrom mentions education a few times here: what might his vision of transhumanism mean for the future of education? What would a transhumanist theory of education look like?
You may also find The transhumanist declaration (2009) useful as an additional summary of the transhumanist position.
Advanced
Hayles, N K (2011) Wrestling with transhumanism. http://www.metanexus.net/essay/ h-wrestling-transhumanism
N Katherine Hayles (Duke University), author of the influential 1999 text How we became posthuman, here constructs a challenge to transhumanism which presents a useful contrast to the Bostrom text; even if you don’t want to delve too much into the advanced reading this week, we’d recommend you read the opening part, simply for the critique Hayles provides of the transhumanist position.
Hayles argues that the framework within which transhumanism considers the future of human evolution and technological advance is ‘too narrow and ideologically fraught with individualism and neoliberal philosophy to be fully up to the task’. Via a critical reading of some classic works of science fiction, she argues that we need a more nuanced, and more politically defensible, series of perspectives than those offered by the theorists and proponents of transhumanist philosophy. The first part of the essay explores some of the problems with the individualistic focus of transhumanism, while the second half uses the literary perspective to more fully explore the issues at stake.
In a sense her argument here is also an argument for the way this course has been set up: by placing the artefacts of popular culture alongside contemporary philosophy and theory, we can gain a richer view of the implications of technological shift for our world and our work. Do you agree? Do you find Hayles’ refutation of transhumanism convincing? And why, given that she clearly has very sound critical reasons for her dislike of transhumanism, does she continue to liken her relationship with it to a ‘relationship with an obsessive and very neurotic lover’?
Perspectives on education
System upgrade: realising the vision for UK education (2012) EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme. http://tel.ioe.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/TELtaster.pdf(The link is to a taster document for the full report, which you will find here).
This report may seem a long way from the sci-fi fantasies and far-fetched human futures envisioned in our other readings and films this week. However, it is presented here as a chance to look at how the themes of enhancement, transformation and technological advance - so important to the literatures and imaginaries of transhumanism - occur and recur, generally unquestioned, across the more everyday literatures of online education. ‘Technology-enhanced learning’ appears to have become the new acceptable term globally for what used to be called ‘e-learning’, but if we look at this term through the lens of transhumanist thought, what new perspectives on online education does it reveal?
This reading is a summary of the report from a large, recent UK research programme (2007-12) which was explicitly concerned with the technological enhancement of learning. There is much in the report which is unexceptionable. However, in reading it, you should consider what vision for education and technology is being forged here. In particular, what has the language used in the report inherited - consciously or otherwise - from the popular and philosophical discourses of transhumanism? How are terms like ‘transformation’, ‘enhancement’ and ‘empowerment’ used? What relationship between the human and the technological is being described? Is the vision here a useful one for us to work with as educators and as learners? What alternative visions might we pursue? Which ‘system’ is being ‘upgraded’?
Carr, M. (2008) Is Google making us stupid? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
This final reading pulls together many of the themes we’ve touched on over the period of the course. It’s an interesting one to read alongside the ‘TEL’ report above, thinking about how relations between the human and the technological are differently worked in each. If the TEL report creates a vision in which technology is under individual or societal control (technology in the TEL report is ‘harnessed’, ‘utilised’, ‘developed’, ‘employed’ in the interests of enhancement), in the Carr article it is human faculties which are under the control of the technology. For Carr, our media environments develop their own logic, to which we adapt socially and physiologically. In a return to a now familiar theme, ‘human nature’ and ‘human being’ is ‘made’ in response to technological shift. Yet this ‘making’ of the human is far from the vision of empowerment and enhancement that we have seen in the readings on transhumanism, and in the vision of education and technology that we saw presented in the TEL report.
‘As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence’, concludes Carr. Is it possible to counter the technological determinism of this view, without resorting to over-simplistic assertions of human dominance over technology? How should we respond, as teachers and learners, to the idea that the internet damages our capacity to think?